When recently published his photographs from Rock Against Racism, full of the drama and intensity of the times, I joined him and the critic, at in the East End of London to discuss the RAR years.Forty years later, among all the theories advanced about its origins and politics, one glaring fact about RAR is often forgotten: at its root was the shared love of music. This is why thinking about the performers who appeared on our stages, and the music they played there, seemed like the best way to cut through the arguments and get to the heart of RAR. Syd, Paul and I each selected three tracks that in some way epitomized the era. What follows are a reflections on the music I chose, and on my involvement with a movement that interrogated the past, prefigured future networking organisation, and celebrated the turbulent era we were living through with – as Syd’s photographs attest – passion, style and commitmentTrack 1. (1977)There are many songs that convey the wild and apocalyptic imagination of the late 1970s and early 1980s in Britain – the pervasive sense of urgency and danger, of state violence and fascist threat – but Tom Robinson’s ‘Winter of ‘79’ differs from others in treating the moment historically. Written in 1977, the song predicts an uprising in 1979 and then looks back at the insurrection from a time in the future when a world-weary activist addresses a new generation: “All you kids who just sit and whine, you should have been there back in ’79, You say we’re giving you a real hard time, you guys are really breaking my heart”.

Prior to the American tour, the group had participated in a concert for the. Gang of Four for Temporary Hoarding, the zine associated with RAR. In London, an event largely organised around opposition to the Corrie Bill (an anti-abortion statute). Try to explain their views on everything from sexism to the notion of love.

Robinson’s prophecies weren’t far off the mark: the next few years would see tanks in Belfast, bombs in London, and riots in cities up and down the country. Like many of the period’s best songs, his catch the jittery mood on the streets. You can hear it especially in ‘Long Hot Summer’, which was inspired by the, and in the shifting allegiances of ‘Up Against the Wall’, where he confronts his audience with the question: “Just whose side are you on?”Robinson wasn’t alone in his sense of foreboding, further warnings of collapse can be heard in the songs of many other bands who played for RAR: in the Clash’s ‘’, Aswad’s ‘’, the Ruts’ ‘’, Stiff Little Fingers’ ‘‘, and, most potently perhaps, in the weird atmospherics of the Specials’ ‘’. On the verge of Thatcherism and the neo-liberal takeover of the world, much of the music of this pivotal moment records the sound of a country breaking apart, of old communities dying and new ones struggling to be born. And it’s importnat to remember that pop music hadn’t yet been fully assimilated into capitalism, it was a playground the young still had largely to themselves, which meant these songs rang out like warning shots fired across a radio that no one in authority was listening to.Tom was the first person who made me think about how you could link people together under the radar.

Something of a graphomaniac, he wrote long letters to his fans, connecting them to one another. In the winter of 1977 I was seventeen, working in the hat and glove department of Debenhams on Oxford Street, and looking for people to share my anger with. He put me in touch with two Jewish schoolgirls from Camden who called themselves Scruf and Scruff; Karen, a stylish secretary, the daughter of East European immigrants; Alan, who was serving in the army in Northern Ireland and being tormented by other soldiers for his love of punk; Patsy, the daughter of West Indian immigrants who was working as a back-up singer; and a razor-sharp Irish girl who went by the name of Anna Gram, and lived on the estate behind my mum and dad’s house in Clapham.

Anna approached me on the Northern line one day, my badges giving out a signal, demanding to know if I was the Irate Kate that Tom Robinson had written to her about. Patsy, Anna, Karen and Scruff at the RAR Carnival, Victoria Park, 1978 (c) John SturrockNot long after this happened, decanted early from work one evening because of another IRA bomb threat, I walked out of Debenhams and made my way over to the East End where RAR were a holding a meeting. I remember being embarrassed by my boring work clothes as I descended into a basement of noisy punks, socialists, writers, photographers and graphic designers, most of them a decade or so older than me. By the end of the evening I was so fired up by their heady talk (they discussed Toussaint L’Ouverture, Alexandra Kollontai and Kurt Weill as if they were old friends), that I chucked in my job and volunteered to become RAR’s first full-time worker., the man who dreamed up RAR after, donated desk space I could use in his Soho photographic studio. Every morning I’d walk up Great Windmill Street as elaborately painted women pushed chairs out in front of the sex shops, smoked and drank espressos, and waited for the day’s punters to slink in. At the studio, the photographers put out their paraphernalia – maybe a wind-machine for a glossy Sunday Times portrait of Kate Bush – and I’d set to answering the letters that had begun to pour in from across the country.

We quickly outgrew our spot in Soho and with the money coming in – school kids’ pennies sellotaped together, the odd fiver from a supportive vicar, tenners from the anarchist bookshop stocking RAR’s innovative poster-magazine, Temporary Hoarding – we could afford a room in Clerkenwell, not far from the Marx Memorial library. Here the operation got a little more sophisticated: the RAR office became the hub and contact point for a much larger group of people and activities. Ruth Gregory and Darla Gilroy on the cover of TH.By day I’d liaise with the now elected RAR committee and the rapidly increasing number of RAR groups in the UK and abroad, communicate with bands and their managers, send out press releases, gestetner newsletters, order new badges and stickers, encourage people to write reviews and reports for Temporary Hoarding, pay bills, draw up agendas, and talk to other groups with whom we often collaborated (the campaign against the Corrie anti-abortion Bill, the Right to Work marchers, and CURB, who organised against violent bouncers). By night we’d run letter-writing sessions, often working into the dawn with a gang of volunteers – teenagers, like my sister Jo and her friends, skiving from school; shop assistants, machine operators and secretaries bunking off work.

We’d all squeeze into RAR’s tiny office, sackfuls of mail strewn around the floor. From the letters flooding in it was evident that there was a nation of kids out there, bored out of their minds, and horrified by the spectre of the National Front marching on their high streets. They described living in nowhere towns and suburbs that closed down at seven o’clock, aching for a life less parochial. What they wanted was the glamour of dissident art and radical ideas – a new world they tried to fathom by listening to John Peel late into the night or reading James Baldwin under the covers by torchlight.RAR became a network before we knew what a network was. We told these kids: here are the addresses of other music fans in your area, set up a RAR group, design a poster, put on a gig, write your own fanzine, and challenge the local National Front. We told them anyone could do it and wrote step-by-step Gig Guides showing them how. And in Temporary Hoarding, the published an article explaining how to build your own PA system, while the described how they recorded their first single by borrowing their mum and dad’s holiday money.

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The explosion of punk and reggae meant that there were bands all over the country hungry for gigs. And there was massive energy and frustration everywhere you turned, which RAR tapped into and transformed into action. X-Ray Spex, RAR Carnival, Victoria Park, 1978.Punk is often been characterized as angry or nihilistic, and there are still endless arguments about its origins and purity: were you early enough on the scene, were you authentically English or, singing in an American drawl, imitating Jamaican patois? In fact, like some of the best reggae, its main mode was reportage of under-reported lives and places. RAR acts like The Members vividly evoked ‘’, Steel Pulse announced a ‘’, while John Cooper Clarke, appearing at the Northern RAR Carnival in Manchester, was scathing about the misery and tedium of much everyday life: “The bloody train is bloody late, You bloody wait you bloody wait, You’re bloody lost and bloody found, Stuck in fucking ”.But as Poly Styrene demonstrated, anger wasn’t the only mode; there was parody, too. The Clash had a nice line in skewering capitalist commodification in songs like ‘‘, as did the Gang of Four in ‘‘ (“I can’t work, I can’t achieve, Send me back”), and X-Ray Spex in ‘’, or the sweetly melancholic, ‘’. Other bands dragged up in the clothes of the oppressor: Robinson sometimes appeared on stage dressed as a policeman, while Steel Pulse donned long white robes for their protest song, ‘’, which they played in an electric performance at the first RAR carnival.

Song Love Is All Around

Steel Pulse, RAR Carnival, Victoria Park, 1978When Poly sang about ‘’ she wasn’t talking about her own, but the idea of it as something manufactured: “Did you do it before you read about it?”, she mocks. There’s a sophistication here which was evident among many of the bands who played for RAR and RAS (Rock Against Sexism): groups like the Gang of Four, the Mekons and the Au Pairs. RAS was the brainchild of another Temporary Hoarding writer,. She was also a member of the RAR committee, alongside Syd, Red, Widgery, TH editors and designers, Ruth Gregory and; photographer and banner-maker, Robert Galvin; myself, John Dennis and Wayne Minter – who both joined me at the RAR office. (After death threats and a letter bomb, our operations moved to Cable Street and then to Finsbury Park.)RAR had been keen to put women on our stages but Lucy rightly saw this wasn’t enough: the aim of RAS was to challenge sexism throughout the music industry. And this meant challenging the bands, too. In the Au Pairs interview she and I conducted for TH, and in, she’s particularly interested in ideas of power, in dissecting the aggression that then characterized so much music, asking: what did it mean, was it necessary, and how might a woman utilize the power invested in her when she walked up to the microphone and took control of the stage?

Kate on RAR’s Militant Entertainment Tour, 1979 (c) Syd SheltonTrack 3.

'Love Is All Around' is a song by American recording neo soul artist Adriana Evans, released as the second single from her R&B hit studio album, Adriana Evans. The track was written by Evans and produced by rapper and producer Jonathan 'Dred' Scott better known as Dred Scott. This song features The Lick in the main vocals.

Track listing[edit]

US CD, Vinyl 12' Single^[1]

Charts[edit]

Notes[edit]

• Producer – Jonathan 'Dred' Scott
• Co-producer - Adriana Evans, Rastine Calhoun III
• Remix – Dred Scott (tracks: A1, A2, B2)
• Writer's – Adriana Evans, Jonathan Dred Scott

References[edit]

1. ^Adriana Evans - Love Is All Around (CD, 12' Single)

External links[edit]